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Monday, June 13, 2016

I'm not sure what Virge Salvador Sarpati ever did to CCP Delegate Zero, CCP Falcon, and CCP Affinity, but they love kicking him while he's down. For those who don't know, "King Serpent", as his sister calls him, is the leader of the Serpentis. To say he is having a bad year is an understatement.

First, Serpentis lost control of Outer Ring Excavations in November last year (YC117) in a hostile takeover conducted by the newly formed Upwell Consortium. Nothing says hostile takeover better than several task forces of Mordu's Legion striking simultaneously across space.

Players became involved in the story as part of CCP's first in-game Christmas/New Year event, Operation Frostline. Mordu's Legion decided to publish the locations of Serpentis sites so capsuleers could kill all the things and get phat loot. Among the initial loot advertised was, "apparel, synth-grade boosters, ship blueprints, all manner of high and low value modules, implants and Nexus Chips," with new items added to the loot tables over time. A fun time was had by all, as long as you weren't Serpentis.

CCP is offering players another go at fighting V Salvador Sarpati at the end of the month. CCP Affinity introduced the event, Shadow of the Serpent, in a dev blog Thursday:

"The Shadow of the Serpent earns its name from the hidden Serpentis arms race we will see happening over the next few weeks. Naturally, many organizations within New Eden are pretty unhappy with the Serpentis creating new, advanced tech with an intention to distribute and will do anything to put a stop to this and they want your help!

"With so much happening in New Eden lately, the major corporations and factions are overwhelmed with work and will reach out to the newly independent Scope Network for help. The Scope Network will use this opportunity to start up a new business venture, as a broker service between the major organizations of New Eden and the real powerhouse; the capsuleers! To help the Scope Network succeed in this venture, we have been working on a prototype framework for a new way to display events happening in-game.

"When an event is happening, you will be able to see event specific challenges in your character selection screen. These will also appear in the new Scope Network window in-game, which you can access via the Neocom. Over the course of the event, which will run for 6 weeks, you will notice a much wider variety of available challenges including roaming Serpentis and Angel Cartel pirates and 9 new event themed sites complete with loot and bounties. On top of that, each time you complete a challenge listed on your Scope Network window you will earn points towards small, medium and large Scope Network prize containers. These containers will contain some very nice rewards, a selection of which will be available for the first time during Shadow of the Serpent."

I know a lot of traditionalists will hate the idea of putting a to-do list on the login page. The usual suspects will proclaim the end of the sandbox and decry CCP's efforts to turn EVE into World of Warcraft. Those critics have a point. When looking at the mockup of the login screen, I can see echoes of Guild Wars 2 and its daily, weekly, and monthly objective system. Personally though, I ignored that when I played GW2.

A mockup of the character select screen for the event.

But, is the system good for EVE Online? I do see some advantages. The first is visibility. I am one of those people who is not thrilled about special events. I might participate if I stumble upon one, but unless a game plants the information right in front of me, I will not take the effort to look up the information on how to take part. Making the event more visible will get more people, possibly even myself, to participate. Of course, that will make the drops less valuable, but that's the free market for you.

Perhaps the biggest advantage is the synergy with the opportunity system. Right now, the system is very bare bones. If a player logs into the game and kills a rat, the reward is 10,000 skill points. Sure, a player is incentivised to log in for a couple of minutes. But I experienced that in Neverwinter. Do something that takes 15 seconds a day and after awhile I levelled up. Part of the reason that I stopped playing Neverwinter is the ease I could level up. A very unsatisfying activity.

Now, combine the opportunity system with the live events and perhaps CCP has something substantive. The player is lured to log into the game by the promise of skill points and then sees the latest activities available for even more rewards. The tasks players can participate in are still unknown, but they could give someone an incentive to jump into the game for 15-20 minutes. I'd call that a win for CCP.

But wait, look what else CCP has in store for the Serpentis Corporation. CCP Fozzie got into the act with a change to boosters:

"In recent months the CONCORD Inner Circle has started seriously considering a new approach to the issue of New Eden's illicit booster trade. Prohibition was successful in reducing booster addiction rates, but has had serious downsides across the cluster.

"The illegal booster trade has enriched the great pirate factions (especially the Serpentis Corporation and their Angel Cartel partners), and led to an increase in underworld violence as local pirate bands compete for slices of this lucrative pie.

"Escalating enforcement requirements have stretched the resources of the DED and the empire customs authorities to their breaking points.

"In response to these issues, the Inner Circle is planning a complete shift in their approach to boosters. Booster possession, trade and consumption by capsuleers will be legalized, and licenses for legal booster production will be available to certain non-capsuleer corporations (X-Sense being the first authorized manufacturer). Booster production and research by pirate corporations and unlicensed capsuleers will continue to be illegal.

"This change in approach is obviously good news for the X-Sense corporation, and experts predict that it will deal a non-trivial blow to the income of the Serpentis Corporation and Angel Cartel. Nobody yet knows how these powerful pirates will respond, but it's a safe assumption that they won't take it lying down."

That's right, now high sec residents don't have to worry about transporting combat boosters around. Not only will that affect PvP, but mission running as well. No longer will PvE types limit themselves to the previously legal synthetic boosters; now they can use the good stuff. Production will still take place in low sec, but manufacturers will undoubtedly transport the goods to high sec markets.

Over the past 8-9 months CCP created a lot of content for players by setting them upon the luckless Serpentis. In a couple of weeks, we'll get to see what the future may look like concerning PvE in EVE. I'm pretty sure that Sarpati wishes the lore team would pick on someone else.